The twilight language explores hidden meanings and synchromystic connections via onomatology (study of names) and toponymy (study of place names). This blog further investigates "name games" and "number coincidences" found in news and history. Examinations are also found in my book The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

Monday, October 29, 2012

It seems strange that a frequent focus today for the Weather Channel's broadcasts of their seemingly near-death assignment for Al Roker was at the ill-faithed named location of Point Pleasant, New Jersey.

Yes, of course, the Mothman sightings were in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, not New Jersey. But the name game is the name game.

The New Jersey site served as the fictionalized version of the town for the setting of a short-lived 2005 television show, Point Pleasant. With shades of Twin Peaks, the melodrama began when a young girl named Christina washes up on the shore near Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey during a violent storm.

During a violent storm.

Let's hope that Hurricane Sandy does not visit death upon any Point Pleasants, whether in New Jersey or West Virginia.

Another area of some attention has been Montauk Point, New York. Montauk Monster, anyone?

Monday, October 22, 2012

There's been another mass shooting in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Are any of this year's candidates, even the ones from Wisconsin, hearing this background rumble from the heart of America?

A man police suspected of killing three and wounding four by opening fire at a tranquil day spa (Azana, African, "ultimate") was found dead Sunday afternoon on October 21, 2012, following a six-hour manhunt that locked down a shopping center, country club and hospital in suburban Milwaukee.

Authorities said they believed the shooting was related to a domestic dispute. The man they identified as the suspect, Radcliffe Franklin Haughton, 45, of Brown Deer, had a restraining order against him.

Christine Bannister, a dispatch supervisor for Waukesha County communications center, said Haughton, 45, of Brown Deer, had been found dead. She could not provide more details.

The shooting happened about 11 a.m. at the Azana Day Spa, a two-story, 9,000-square-foot building across from a major shopping mall in Brookfield, a middle-to-upper class community west of Milwaukee. Hours later, a bomb squad descended on the building, and Police Chief Dan Tushaus said an improvised explosive device had been found inside. It was later declared it was not a bomb.

It was the second mass shooting in Wisconsin this year. Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old Army veteran and white supremacist, killed six people and injured three others before fatally shooting himself Aug. 5 at a Sikh temple south of Milwaukee.

Sunday's shooting took place less than a mile from where seven people were killed and four wounded on March 12, 2005, when a gunman opened fire at a Living Church of God service held at a hotel.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

I was in Dallas, Texas, on October 19, 2012, in transit to a conference in Jefferson. By coincidence, Big Tex caught on fire. I'm not able to pen too much from the road.

Allow me to share what Enki writes:

This morning in Dallas, at the State Fair of Texas, the iconic "Big Tex" burned up.When I saw the photos of the fire, I was reminded of the ritual sacrifice in the 1973 film The Wicker Man. Interestingly, this year, the Scottish band Texas headlined at Scotland's Wickerman Festival, where each year a burning of a wicker man concludes festivities. The festival kicked off this summer on July 20, the day James Holmes shot up the theater in Aurora. (Another Holmes, Emily Holmes, appeared in the crappy 2006 remake of The Wicker Man.) Holmes means "from the river island." The setting of The Wicker Man is on an island, and the original film's production was based at Newton Stewart on the River Cree.Holmes, fairs, and death also intersect in the story of one of America's first known serial killers, Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. This Holmes designed and built a deathtrap hotel, and he lured victims to his hotel from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.Maury Terry's belief, as outlined in his book The Ultimate Evil, that David Berkowitz was associated with a cult and that the Son of Sam murders were ritual sacrifices, also comes to mind. In the famous letter sent to Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin, the .44 Caliber Killer references "Wicked King Wicker."

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

I was sitting at home, when at 7:12 pm Eastern, my house shook like it has never before. (Freight trains roll through this part of Portland, a block and half away, so I thought when it started, it was just another train. But this was shaky like no train going by.)

I've felt earthquakes before. During the parts of two years I lived in San Francisco, earthquakes, mostly small ones, were not unusual. The biggest quake I remember before tonight was one in southern Illinois, on November 9, 1968. It hit at 11:02 am, and it measured 5.4. I vividly recall I was working with mental health patients at Anna State Hospital, in a large hall, used as a gym, on the hospital campus. We all raced outside, although I did wait a bit under the arch doorway of that grand hall. Reading about that New Madrid quake nowadays, I see what a large event it was and how lucky we were.

Tonight's earthquake is said to have measured at first 4.5, then it was upgraded to 4.6, definitely the largest in New England in a long time. Eyewitnesses across the Boston area reported feeling the quake for up to 20 to 30 seconds. (Wednesday morning, and the feds have downgraded it to 4.0. I must say, they must not be New Englanders and survived that one, cause it sure didn't feel like a little 4.0 quake.)

The epicenter is said to be centered west of Hollis and Lake Arrowhead, Maine, 23 miles west of Portland, where I live. But more importantly, the epicenter was first said to be 17 miles deep, then later only 3 (and on Wednesday, 4.1) miles deep. That is a very shallow earthquake, and probably why it felt so powerful here.

Mainers are tough people, and there does not seem to be any damage reported from this quake yet. (Wednesday: Some cracked foundations and chimneys are being discussed.)

Standing on the sidelines at a soccer game in Waterboro Tuesday night, Kevin St. Jarre saw the spectators in the bleachers across the field suddenly stand up. Then a ripple, a "landwave," began rolling from the bleachers and heading toward him.

"It came across the field, and it passed beneath my feet and then behind me to where the team was sitting on the bench," said St. Jarre, who coaches the Massabesic High School varsity girls, who were playing against Scarborough High School.

"We pulled the players off the field and took a five minute break and calmed the girls down." ~ Tom Bell, writing in the Portland Press Herald, October 17, 2012.

What surprised me was the explosion of humor on the social media. Here are photographic samples of the "damage" and how people immediately reacted to this earthquake.

I will be speaking at a conference in Jefferson, Texas about that footage. Right before appearing there, my host is showing me the near-Dallas site of Aurora and the Aurora Cemetery. I've written about that recently here.

Interestingly, that old story is all about an airship in 1897.

Now a modern airship named Aurora is being employed to hunt Bigfoot.

The Falcon Project (principal investigator Jeff Meldrum, Ph. D.) will conduct an extensive aerial search for populations of Sasquatch or Bigfoot, by means of an helium-filled airship, the Aurora, and use thermal-imaging and high resolution wireless videography equipment. The Aurora Mk II airship appears to offer advantages over helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft, in terms of maneuverability and stealth.

The 45-foot (13.7-meter)-long Aurora airship will be the first one of its kind, designed and built by Canadian remote-control airship company RATS (Remote Aerial Tripod Specialists) Inc. It will consist of tandem side-by-side helium-filled envelopes, joined by a gyro-stabilized carbon fiber camera platform. That catamaran-like design will help keep it from rolling from side to side, which can be a problem with traditional single-envelope airships.~ Gizmag.

With speeds of 35-45 mph, it will be able to maneuver with the degree of precision necessary to track a running or strolling Sasquatch.

On May 18, 2010, Pennsylvania Senator Specter was defeated by Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania's DemocraticPrimary election 54% to 46% (Sestak 564,444 votes to Specter's 481,566). Due to that event, Specter's senate career ended on January 3, 2011. (He seriously ran for US President in 1996. See a variety of his campaign buttons, here.)

One should not be so shallow as to blame a massive coverup like the investigation of the JFK assassination on one person, but the metaphor afforded by the actions of Arlen Specter are worth noting.

Lest we forget, Arlen Specter has been involved in conspiracies for a long time, and Lee Harvey Oswald was always on his mind. Don't take my word for this.

The Magic Bullet Theory was introduced by the Warren Commission (November 29, 1963 - September 24, 1964) to explain how three shots supposedly made by Lee Harvey Oswald resulted in the assassination of the United States President John F. Kennedy.

The theory is credited to Warren Commission staffer Arlen Specter. Specter proposed that a single bullet, known as "Warren Commission Exhibit 399" (also labeled as "CE399"), caused all of the non-fatal wounds in both President Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally on November 22, 1963, at Dealey Plaza, btw, the site of the first Masonic temple in Dallas, Texas.

The fatal head wound to JFK was caused by a bullet other than this alleged "Magic Bullet."

Arlen's checked history and reputation as "Snarlin' Arlen," is well-documented. It appears Wikipedia has edited out the "reputation" material.Here's what it said:

Over Specter's long and notable legislative career, numerous sources from within the U.S. Senate reported that they found it difficult to work with him. For example, when Specter was still a Republican, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott needed him to sign off on an appropriations bill. However, Specter refused to sign the document unless Lott flew out to Pennsylvania to attend two fund raisers for him. Lott agreed, but this incident only contributed to reputation which earned Specter the nickname "Snarlin' Arlen.".[*] Similarly, Specter gained a reputation among U.S. Embassy staff for condescending treatment and unreasonable demands such as organizing squash tournaments on his behalf.*"John J. Miller on Arlen Specter on National Review Online". Old.nationalreview.com. http://old.nationalreview.com/flashback/miller200403260926.asp. Retrieved June 13, 2010.Note 56.*Monday, April 26, 2004 12:01 A.M. EDT (April 26, 2004). "John Fund on the Trail - WSJ.com". Opinionjournal.com. http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110005003. Retrieved June 13, 2010.

Behind the scenes, of course, Specter did always have the Warren Commission on his mind.

On April 28, 2009, as the media swarmed and tried to interview Senator Arlen Specter about his jump from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, he is reported to have said, "I don't think Lee Harvey Oswald had this big a crowd trailing him."

What a curious thing to say.

Well, it wasn't really too weird for Arlen Specter to say what he said, after all.
Years later after the Warren Commission, Specter was the initial attorney of Ira Einhorn, the "unicorn killer," a one-time friend of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Einhorn was a big player in the environmental movement; just ask him for he claimed he invented "Earth Day." Einhorn was arrested for killing Holly Maddux and was at first represented by Arlen Specter. Einhorn's bail was not paid by him but by Barbara Bronfman, a member of the family who owns Seagram's.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

The final apparition at Fatima took place on October 13, 1917. In five years, the 100th anniversary will be celebrated. In the meantime, let's ponder this guest blog by T. Peter Park, which is related to that and October 13th events, plus one tied to a lexilink. (I've added some other incidents that have occurred on October 13ths, following Park's remarks.)

October 13: Ferrer, Fatima, and the "Twilight Language"
This Saturday, October 13, should interest students of the "Twilight Language" and "Name Game." October is coincidentally (or perhaps not so coincidentally) the anniversary of two notable incidents in the 20th century history of Catholicism versus anti-Catholicism in the Iberian peninsula: the execution of the Spanish rationalist educator Francisco Ferrer on October 13, 1909, and the so-called "solar miracle" of the Virgin Mary in Fatima, Portugal exactly eight years later, on October 13, 1917.

On October 13, 1909, the Spanish anarchist and secularist educator Francisco Ferrer Guardia (1859-1909) was executed by a Spanish military firing squad in Barcelona on flimsy evidence as the alleged instigator of the July 1909 Semana Tragica ("Tragic Week") Barcelona riots where mobs burned churches and convents in protest against a military expedition to Morocco, widely believed to be motivated by a wish to protect mines there owned by the Jesuits. Ferrer's execution touched off a world-wide storm of anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic protests, and provoked a cabinet crisis in Spain itself. From 1901 to 1906, Ferrer had run an anarchist and anti-religious "Escuela Moderna" in Barcelona that inspired the founding of many similar schools throughout Spain and abroad, and it was widely believed that a reactionary, intolerant Spanish Church and State had framed him up on account of his radical and rationalist ideas.
Liberals, rationalists, socialists, and anarchists throughout Europe and the Americas hailed Ferrer as a judicially murdered martyr for rational thought and intellectual liberty, while conservatives and Catholics saw him as a revolutionary conspirator justly condemned and punished for his incitements to violence. Cities and towns throughout
Continental Europe named streets or plazas in Ferrer's honor, general strikes protesting the execution brought Italian cities to a standstill for several days that October, and rationalists, socialists, and anarchists founded "Ferrer Schools" or "Modern Schools" in his honor in the United States and other countries. The future historian Will Durant was a teacher at the New York Ferrer School in 1910-1911, and met and married his wife and future collaborator when she was one of his students there! In Spain itself, the international protests led to a cabinet crisis, as Prime Minister Antonio Maura's Conservative government was harshly criticized by his Liberal opponents for needlessly provoking foreign opinion by authorizing Ferrer's execution. The international polarization of opinion over Ferrer and his conviction recalls the Dreyfus Affair in France just a few years earlier. Although almost forgotten today, the Ferrer case probably received more public world-wide attention than any other single incident concerned with the history of anarchism, at least until the Sacco-Vanzetti affair of 1921-1927.

On October 13, 1917, a crowd of 70,000 pilgrims and curiosity-seekers gathered at the small Portuguese village of Fatima, where three peasant children had allegedly seen visions of the Virgin Mary on the 13th of every month for several months. While the three visionary children knelt, prayed, and chanted the Rosary as they had been doing on the 13th of each month, many people in the crowd reportedly saw the Sun "dance," spin, and change color for several minutes and then return to normal. Devout Catholics ever since have claimed the phenomenon as a miracle, while skeptics, and also liberal and middle-of-the-road Catholics unenthusiastic about apparitions and alleged modern miracles have interpreted it as a mass hallucination or unusual but quite natural atmospheric phenomenon. In the past few decades, some occult, "New Age," and Fortean writers have also seen the "dancing Sun" as a UFO! Since 1917, Fatima has become a major Catholic Marian shrine, rivaling Lourdes in popularity as a pilgrimage site, with "Our Lady of Fatima" as one of the most popular Virgin Mary devotions. Lourdes, Fatima, and Medjugorje in Croatia (formerly Yugoslavia) are probably the world's three most popular Marian pilgrimage shrines today.

Nobody to my knowledge has ever noted this coincidence of dates. Yet, it does seem an odd coincidence that the October 13 date, a few years apart, should have marked noteworthy episodes in the religion/irreligion conflict in the same part of Europe, in two neighboring countries. I have often wondered if it's just a mere meaningless coincidence, or if there might be some obscure connection after all. It's the sort of coincidence that easily inspires speculations about the "Twilight Language," about Carl Gustav Jung's "synchronicity," or about Fatima as perhaps somehow triggered by a memory of the Ferrer case in the Iberian "collective unconscious"!

Also, the place name Fatima recalls the Prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatimah, wife of his chief disciple Ali, revered by many Muslims (especially Shi'ites) as a sort of Islamic Virgin Mary figure. One of the best-known modern Marian apparitions took place in a village named for the Muslim counterpart of Mary! Portugal, like Spain, was occupied by the Muslims in the Middle Ages, we may recall. Again, could there possibly be
some sort of obscure connection here in this odd "name game" coincidence?
Could this Fatima-Fatimah connection be more "Twilight Language" at play?

Stimulated by T. Peter Park's essay, I note that October 13ths have, in the last forty years, been linked to aircraft crashes and disasters. For example:

1923 - Death of Alexis Maneyrol, French aviation pioneer, killed when his Peyret monoplane broke up in the air at Lympne Air Races, Kent.1972 – An Aeroflot Ilyushin Il-62 crashes outside Moscow killing 176.

1972 – Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashes in the Andes mountains, near the border between Argentina and Chile. By December 23, 1972, only 16 out of 45 people lived long enough to be rescued. Survivors resort to eating dead passengers before their rescue two months later.
1976 – A Bolivian Boeing 707 cargo jet crashes in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, killing 100 (97, mostly children, killed on the ground).
1977 – Four Palestinians hijack Lufthansa Flight 181 to Somalia and demand release of 11 members of the Red Army Faction.
1983 – On night of October 13/14, Coastal Airways 707-436 was destroyed by fire at Perpignan, France.1992 – An Antonov An-124 operated by Antonov Airlines registered SSSR-82002, crashes near Kiev, Ukraine killing 8.
2009 – UN General Assembly decided to designate October 13th as the official date for the International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction. International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction encourages every citizen and government to take part in building more disaster resilient communities and nations.
2010 – The Copiapó mining accident in Copiapó, Chile comes to an end as all 33 miners arrive at the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground awaiting rescue.

On Friday, October 13, 1307 ... [King] Philip [IV of France ] ordered [Jacques] de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the phrase: Dieu n'est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume ["God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom"]. ~ Source.

Some have theorized that this event was the origin of the superstition that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day. It has also been suggested that the Templars, who had been exposed to Islam in the holy land, named Fatima, Portugal after Muhammad's daughter Fatimah. ~ Enki.

Friday, October 12, 2012

The mainstream media groups have seemingly moved on from mass shootings that began with the Colorado Aurora (red dawn) event at a movie theater on July 20, 2012, to the American embassy violence of September 11, 2012. But were some of these events foreshadowed by a science fiction visionary?

Americans don't forget, and many this week are reminded of Tehran, Iran, November 4, 1979, when the U.S. embassy was taken over and then Americans were held hostages for 444 days, until January 20, 1981.

Synchronicity emerges, and recent events in Egypt and Libya are going to soon merge with and be mirrored in a movie about those times. Believe it or not, comic book genius Jack Kirby and a familiar location are part of the true story upon which the film is based.

The way all of this is going to unfold is through the movie Argo, an American political intrigue film based on Tony Mendez's account of the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. Filming began in September 2011, and the movie is scheduled to be released October 12, 2012.

The governments of the United States and Canada partnered to rescue six U.S. foreign service members who had evaded the hostage-taking at the takeover of the American embassy in Iran by staying in the home of the Canadian Ambassador. The governments were able to convince Iran that the six hostages were members of a film crew who were scouting the area for a movie titled Argo. The CIA's fake production company used real designs by comics legend Jack Kirby and Barry Ira Geller's screenplay for the upcoming film Lord of Light. Using John Chambers' idea for the caper, Mendez admitted stealing designs and screenplay from Geller's film production. Armed with professional designs and screenplay, the hostages were successfully able to escape the country under their fake identities, notes Wikipedia.

Knowles talks of this incident in 2008, on his blog, when he says, in part:

...Kirby was hired to do design work for one of those post-Star Wars pipe dreams- a major motion picture based on Roger Zelzany's 1967 novel, Lord of Light.
Drawing on the same themes Kirby mastered with The Eternals and The New Gods, Lord of Light played directly into Kirby's greatest strengths as a designer and visionary. Kirby was also contracted to make designs for a multi-million dollar theme park, whose preposterous untenability boggles the mind. Sadly and predictably, the project ran a[g]round after a producer made off with the seed money for the project.

Here's where I began to freak out, a bit, as I was researching this today, in Loring's and others accounts. The designs for Jack Kirby's Science Fiction Land theme park were an important part of the cover story to convince the Iranians this was all authentic. Most of the time people don't mention where this theme park was suppose to be in the general accounts about Argo.

Okay, Knowles may be obsessed with Kirby. After all, CLK's written 85 (!) blog postings about the guy. But there's a good reason why he is.

Knowles also mentions another person of note:

One of the artisans signed on to bring Lord of Light to life was Planet of the Apes makeup maestro John Chambers, who doubled as a disguise maker for the CIA. A fellow agent contacted him, looking for an abandoned script to use to coax the newly-installed Iranian mullahs into signing on to a film project. The Iranians needed money and were looking to set up business deals to keep the revolution afloat. The CIA in turn was looking to sneak some hostages out of the country, and needed ideas. One enterprising agent was looking to cozy up to the mullahs by pitching a film project to them. In those days, Hollywood's eldritch power could soften the most hard-bitten theocrats.

John Chambers? Yes, John Chambers. I was involved with the investigations about whether or not Chambers was behind some famous and infamous Bigfoot stories. I also wrote his obituary, which was picked up by various mainstream outlets.

I penned the following about Chambers:

John Chambers, who once created a Bigfoot carnival prop and was rumored to be behind the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage, died of diabetes complications, 25 August 2001, at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home in Woodland Hills. He was 78.
***
During his 30-year career, Chambers worked on several movies and television shows, including TV's The Outer Limits, The Munsters, Lost in Space and Mission Impossible. Chambers was responsible for putting the pointy ears on Star Trek's Mr. Spock. His makeup and prosthetics film credits included National Lampoon's Class Reunion (1982), Halloween II (1981), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), SSSSSSS (1973), Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), Superbeast (1972), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Planet of the Apes (1968), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), and Showdown at Boot Hill (1958).
***
Chambers' first of only a few acting appearances was in a 1971 movie about a California Bigfoot that terrorized co-eds. The film, Schlock was directed by John Landis, who also played the film's very thin Bigfoot. Chambers played the National Guard Captain in the film. Chambers' student, Rick Baker, who one day would create Harry in Harry and the Hendersons, did the makeup and created the Bigfoot in Schlock.

So why Chambers? He was also an old CIA subcontractor. John Chambers was "given the highest civilian award from the CIA for his help with numerous transformations. Some of his work can be seen at the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. He also set up the cover story of a film crew planning to shoot a science fiction film in Iran for his special effects colleague Tony Mendez in order to rescue some American embassy personnel who escaped capture by the Iranian militants in November 1979," mentions his Wikipedia entry.

Knowles points out that Wired delved into the Iranian episode further, in depth:

[Barry] Geller imagined a Colorado theme park based on Kirby's set designs that would be called Science Fiction Land; it would include a 300-foot-tall Ferris wheel, voice-operated mag-lev cars, a "planetary control room" staffed by robots, and a heated dome almost twice as tall as the Empire State Building.
Geller had announced his grand plan in November at a press conference attended by Jack Kirby, former football star and prospective cast member Rosey Grier, and several people dressed like visitors from the future. Shortly thereafter, Geller's second-in-command was arrested for embezzling production funds, and the Lord of Light film project evaporated. Since Chambers had been hired by Geller to do makeup for the film, he still had the script and drawings at his house. The story, a tale of Hindu-inspired mystical science fiction, took place on a colonized planet. Iran's landscape could provide many of the rugged settings required by the script.
He (Mendez) removed the cover and gave the script a new name, Argo — like the vessel used by Jason on his daring voyage across the world to retrieve the Golden Fleece.

To build his cover, Mendez put $10,000 into his briefcase and flew to Los Angeles. He called his friend John Chambers, the veteran makeup artist who had won a 1969 Academy Award for Planet of the Apes and also happened to be one of Mendez’s longtime CIA collaborators. Chambers brought in a special effects colleague, Bob Sidell. They all met in mid-January and Mendez briefed the pair on the situation and his scheme. Chambers and Sidell thought about the hostages they were seeing each night on television and quickly declared they were in.
In just four days, Mendez, Chambers, and Sidell created a fake Hollywood production company. They designed business cards and concocted identities for the six members of the location-scouting party, including all their former credits. The production company’s offices would be set up in a suite at Sunset Gower Studios on what was formerly the Columbia lot, in a space vacated by Michael Douglas after he finished The China Syndrome.
All they needed now was a film — and Chambers had the perfect script. Months before, he had received a call from a would-be producer named Barry Geller. Geller had purchased the rights to Roger Zelazny’s science fiction novel, Lord of Light, written his own treatment, raised a few million dollars in starting capital from wealthy investors, and hired Jack Kirby, the famous comic book artist who cocreated X-Men, to do concept drawings. Along the way, Geller imagined a Colorado theme park based on Kirby’s set designs that would be called Science Fiction Land; it would include a 300-foot-tall Ferris wheel, voice-operated mag-lev cars, a “planetary control room” staffed by robots, and a heated dome almost twice as tall as the Empire State Building. Geller had announced his grand plan in November at a press conference attended by Jack Kirby, former football star and prospective cast member Rosey Grier, and several people dressed like visitors from the future. Shortly thereafter, Geller’s second-in-command was arrested for embezzling production funds, and the Lord of Light film project evaporated.
Since Chambers had been hired by Geller to do makeup for the film, he still had the script and drawings at his house. The story, a tale of Hindu-inspired mystical science fiction, took place on a colonized planet. Iran’s landscape could provide many of the rugged settings required by the script. A famous underground bazaar in Tehran even matched one of the necessary locations. “This is perfect,” Mendez said. He removed the cover and gave the script a new name, Argo — like the vessel used by Jason on his daring voyage across the world to retrieve the Golden Fleece.
[Finally, the plot was put in place, the cover stories worked at the airport, and the time to catch the flight was upon them....]
A mechanical problem caused a delay, and the Revolutionary Guards were starting to turn their attention to foreign passengers.
Mendez disappeared. He had a contact at the airport and went to check on the flight status. No sooner had he learned that the delay would be short than they heard the announcement: “Swissair flight 363, ready for immediate departure.” As they boarded the plane from the windy tarmac, Anders noticed the word AARGAU was printed across the fuselage — the name of the Swiss region where the plane originated was strangely similar to that of their cover story. He punched Mendez’s arm and said, “You guys arrange everything, don’t you?”

What we see here is even a synchromystic link within their story. Argo-Aargau shows up in this story. The Swissair name was because of a section of the country. Aargau is one of the more northerly cantons of Switzerland. It comprises the lower course of the river Aare, which is why the canton is called Aar-gau. In the 17th century, Jews were banished from Switzerland. However, a few families were permitted to live in two villages, Endingen and Lengnau, in Aargau which became the Jewish ghetto in Switzerland.

Aargau shows up in the Star Wars universe as a planet in the Zug system of the Core Worlds region, not far from Coruscant and the Corellian Run. It was run by and served as the headquarters for the Bank of Aargau, which was part of the InterGalactic Banking Clan.

The elimination of the true role Barry Ira Geller's Lord of Light film project and its Jack Kirby production designs played in the real-life caper may cost the film several million Kirby/Zelazny-fan tickets! What a lost opportunity! And for what? affleck was stuck on the film being all about him in the leading role and wanted the rights to mine and Jack Kirby's work for nothing. When I and maybe the Kirby Estate said no, how about a few shekels, he just cut us out! Is that a financially a responsible executive decision?
The plan to use a desert-based SCIFI movie as the very basis to get the six Americans out of Iran was totally John Chambers' idea, based upon his recent employment for my film production, Lord of Light; it was John's standing in the film industry (Oscar winner, etc.) -- not Tony Mendez's (affleck's character) -- who up to that point was totally unfamiliar with film business infrastructure (his own admission). Chambers did everything out of patriotism to our country and deserves the credit for this caper he has never publicly received.

The choice of the name Argo is intriguing. In Greek mythology, the Argo (in Greek: Ἀργώ, meaning 'swift') was the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed from Iolcos to retrieve the Golden Fleece. It was named after its builder, Argus.

But that Kirby's Science Fiction Land was to be at Aurora, Colorado, results in another coincidence, the location of a famed mine near there: The Argo Tunnel. This site was originally called the Newhouse Tunnel (after Salt Lake City mining magnate Samuel Newhouse). It is a 4.16 miles mine drainage and access tunnel with its portal at Idaho Springs, Colorado, not really too far from Aurora. The tunnel intersected nearly all the major gold mines between Idaho Springs and Central City, and is the longest such drainage tunnel in the Central City-Idaho Springs mining district.

There is a documentary in the works about Geller and his attempts to film Lord of Light and the plans for the huge SciFi theme park called ScienceFictionLand, by award-winning documentary director Judd Ehrlich.

Bucky Fuller had an idea to build a domed city (above), also envisioned by Jack Kirby as Science Fiction Land (seen at top). There is also such a city, intriguing named Argo City, appearing in Superman Annual 1, September 1960, by Jerry Siegel (below).

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About Me

Investigator of human and animal mysteries since 1960. Swamp Thing character "Coleman Wadsworth" in #4:7 and more in #4:8, is a tribute.
Author of over 35 books, including The Unidentified (1975), Mysterious America (1983/2007), Suicide Clusters (1987), Cryptozoology A to Z (1999), Bigfoot! (2003), The Copycat Effect (2004), and field guides.
Educated in anthropology-zoology at SIU-Carbondale, and psychiatric social work at Simmons College School of Social Work. Began doctoral work in anthropology (Brandeis University) and family violence (UNH). Taught at NE universities (1980 to 2003), while concurrently a senior researcher at the Muskie School (1983 to 1996), before retiring to write, lecture, consult, & open museum. Popular documentary course was taught for 23 semesters; appeared on C2C, The Larry King Show, MonsterQuest, Lost Tapes, In Search Of, and other tv programs.
Loren Coleman is a dedicated father (Caleb, Malcolm, Des), cryptozoologist, media consultant, and baseball fan.